Does Greener Living Support Your Values?

What is important to you? Your health? Your family and friends? Your community? Our world?

Even though I may have not yet met you or talked with you, I care about you, what you do, and how it affects your community, my community and our world. That’s part of what is important to me, part of my values. This is why I do what I do.

This whole green and sustainability thing is not about politics or tree hugging. This is about doing your best for you and yours in your home. This is about you owning it and doing what you can. This is about not worrying about what you cannot get done. This is about celebrating what you CAN do and doing it!

The green home wave is growing fast and green and sustainability are now a regular part of our conversations. If you are not yet on the wave, I want to inspire you to join in. The Green Home Coach is here to inspire you with people and their stories, educating you about what makes a green home green and how to do it – a bit at a time or all at once. Then providing you with the resources and tools to take action. My personal mission is to empower people, especially women, in their homes and families by sharing how green and sustainability offers a safer, healthier and more comfortable home.

Values Mismatch?

Yet, there is a mismatch. Many of us are now conscious – about our health, our environment, as well as energy and water. We know that there are actions to take, and we talk about them. Yet, for many of us, we don’t yet take the actions. We know if we start a fitness plan, our health will improve, but we drag our feet (maybe literally). We know there are safer, healthier options for our homes and furnishings that will improve our living experience and may also help the people who make them. We recognize that much energy and water is simply wasted, yet we don’t turn off the light, TV, water…

So what matters to each of us personally is what drives our actions and our behaviors. For me it started with chemical sensitivity in one of my children. This started my quest to better understand the trade-offs in buying choices we were making and figuring out what to do about it.

You can start by choosing companies that are doing something about sustainability and green and are walking their talk. Just looking for this information gives you an idea of how high-priority it is to the company. Sustainability or green information may usually be located on their web site or in their literature. This information can be your first step a buying decision by informing you if that company that makes or sells their product(s) or runs the business in a way that is in line with your personal values and choices.

Reading labels is a great place to start too. Just like reading food labels tells us what is in the food, product labels can tell us where it is made, what is in it, etc. Green certification labels are a great guidepost. Just be sure the certification is a 3rd party independent certification, rather than a self-certification. Here’s a few in the “health and wellness” category to get you started.

Your home is your refuge. It’s the place where life happens. You know, the little stuff that happens every day. Where you wake up and smell the coffee, where you read your kiddo a bedtime story, scratch your dog’s tummy and all the other little actions that make our houses home.

But our homes may have a secret life. With all the complexity of our modern life, we unknowingly may be living in a home that is not in our best interest. It may be something big like lead paint or mold or huge utility bills. But chances are, it’s the small stuff. The leaky toilet, the rug we bought last weekend or the cleaners we are using.

That’s exactly why I wrote my book. To help you know about and change the small stuff. In retrospect, I wish the title of my book was “Simple Choices to a Better Home – Living Green Effortlessly” because it really is about your better home and the simple choices you can make to get it. The living green effortlessly is just a by-product.

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